


Impromptu Musings

by Elialys



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Humor, Prompt Fic, Romance, Short & Sweet, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-30
Updated: 2019-10-30
Packaged: 2021-01-13 10:41:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21242771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elialys/pseuds/Elialys
Summary: A collection of ficlets/short stories, most of which are the results of tumblr prompts.





	1. Gifts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For me, the main point of answering prompts as a writing exercise is to do my best not to overthink it and just WRITE without worrying much about over-editing everything to death the way I usually do with my more ~serious stories. Aka don't except anything too thought out in any of those stories :p
> 
> This story's prompt was: _First gift exchange in Pete's World. Christmas? A birthday? A spontaneous gift? Whatever you like. Please and thank you. (Unconnected to your verse, just to throw you for a loop. Hehe.)_

They’ve started leaving the building at the same time every night, now, even though they don’t work on the same floor. 

The first couple of times, it happened by accident. Every time after that, there’s definitely a conscious decision made on both side, hoping to find the other in that elevator.

Beside the occasional joined missions, these elevator rides have become the only place where they properly…communicate.

Nearly three months have passed since they’ve been left behind in this universe. While Rose remembers with painful clarity why she shut him down so completely when they first found themselves trapped together on this side of the Void, every single one of these reasons seem almost…irrelevant, now.

She wants to reach out, let him know she didn’t mean half the things she told him back when pain and anger controlled her decisions, but he’s become as guarded and cautious as she would expect the Doctor to become, after the way she treated him. 

They live in apartments that are less than two blocks away from each other; the two of them work in the same building, three floors apart. Their lives are _this_ close to being in sync, their paths regularly crossing, yet never quite intertwining.

Except during those short elevator rides.

These days, when the Doctor asks her how she is while the car makes its way down, Rose doesn’t answer with platitudes anymore. She tells him how she feels, going as far as maintaining eye contact. She tells him she’s tired, she tells him she’s hungry, she tells him she’s cold and hates the snow - which all sound like platitudes but they’re not because they’re _true_. 

She doesn’t tell him she misses him, even though he’s right there. She doesn’t tell him she hates the snow because without him, snow is just a bunch of ice crystals spiralling to the ground. 

She never asks him how _he_ is, because she knows he’ll be honest, too, and she’s not sure she’s ready to hear his truths. She doesn’t want to hear that he’s not sleeping because he’s having nightmares. She doesn’t want to be told that he misses her, too, because she’s solely responsible for the two of them being miserable on their own.

When she enters the elevator tonight and finds him there, as she hoped (knew) he would be, she immediately notices something different.

He’s carrying a paper bag.

Now _carrying a paper_ _bag _is not extraordinary in itself, but when you come to know every single detail of a two minutes encounter by heart, _a paper bag_ suddenly becomes a significant unknown variable.

There’s no ‘How are you?’ tonight. Again, when you only have two minutes to get to your point, it’s best to get there fast.

When she looks up at him after staring at the mysterious bag for a few seconds, she notes the way his cheeks have become pinker, and her insides twist when she realises he’s _blushing_.

“I, uh, made you something,” he announces.

Rose doesn’t respond, carrying on watching him as he fiddles with the bag, soon extracting something long, colourful and _fluffy_. 

He holds out the knitted scarf out for her to take, but she’s too shocked to be able to move.

“You…knitted me a scarf,” she states, sounding as dumbfounded as she feels.

His cheeks have become positively red, now. “Well,” he says, tilting his head. “I didn’t knit it.” A pause. “I crocheted it.”

The elevator stops, causing a familiar drop inside Rose’s chest, but even the doors opening and the soft ‘_DING_’ that echoes through the air is not enough to break the moment.

“You know how to crochet,” Rose once again states more than she asks, carrying on sounding genuinely stunned.

Second tilt of the head in less than thirty seconds. He’s not only blushing, now, he’s grimacing a little, too. “Donna was quite good at it so…well, it’s not the skill I would have picked if I’d been given a choice, but…well.” 

Another pause, the silence only broken by the doors closing up again. 

“I get bored in the evenings,” he explains with a tensed shrug, not looking at her anymore, his hand starting to drop. “And you’ve be saying how cold you were. That, and you used to wear that scarf you grandmother made you, back when…you know, back in the other…anyway. I know it’s not the same, and it’s definitely not as smooth looking as your old Nana Grace’s scarf, but I thought -”

He’s interrupted by the doors opening again, someone else now entering the lift, putting an abrupt end to the moment. 

The Doctor has finally lowered his outstretched hand and stepped out of the elevator, muttering something that sounds a lot like ‘_Never mind’ _even as he dashes for the exit.

“Doctor, wait!” 

She forgot just how _fast_ this man can be when he’s running away from something; he’s already stepping through the main doors by the time Rose is calling out his name, half-jogging to join him.

She holds back a sigh of relief when she finds him waiting outside the building, the scarf bundled up under his arm, now, his hands deep in the pocket of his coat. He’s not looking at her anymore, so obviously embarrassed, with his shoulders hunched and his face bright pink. She wants to kick herself for making him feel this way.

Rose reaches out, gently grabbing for the scarf, pulling it out from his loose grip. “It’s…it’s beautiful, thank you,” she tells him softly. “Sorry, ‘m just…You took me by surprise, is all.”

He watches her intently as she carefully wraps the scarf around her neck, and the intensity of his stare is doing more to increase her body temperature than the thick wool ever could. 

She only notices the snowflakes falling from the sky when she feels them melting on the skin of her face the moment they land there.

“Thank you,” she breathes out, pushing herself up on her tiptoes to press a soft kiss on his equally flushed skin. “Nana Grace would be proud.”

She falls back onto her heels, instinctively grabbing at the lapels of his coat as she does so, tugging gently, yet decidedly. Caught up in her momentum, the Doctor lets himself be pulled, erasing the small gap between their faces.

As more ice crystals slowly drift down upon them, Rose remembers why she used to love snow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're interested in me answering a specific prompt, don't hesitate to ask me here or over on [tumblr](https://elialys.tumblr.com/ask) ;-)


	2. Romantic dinner

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: _How about the Doctor trying to cook Rose a romantic dinner and failing miserably?_

Her tongue, she thinks in an odd moment of clarity, might have to be cut off.

She doesn’t fully realise she’s dashed from the living room to the kitchen until she finds herself standing in front of the open fridge, milk carton in hand and up to her mouth, the liquid dribbling down the sides of her face and down her chin, as she gulps at it as if her life depended on it.

The dish had looked beautiful. 

Not only did it look aesthetically pleasing, the green of the avocado contrasting with the red flecks of what she’d assumed were bits of tomatoes, but Rose knew it would be tasty, too; she’d tested enough of his meals by now to trust his cooking skills blindly.

The problem is that the red flecks ornamenting his _bruschetta _hadn’t been tomatoes at all. 

She downs most of the milk before the heat from the spices has dimmed enough for her to be able to breathe properly. Feeling flushed, sweaty and quite a little bit sticky, with milk trails all over her face and down the front of her top, she turns to stare at the man standing half-concealed in the doorway.

“I…” the Doctor ‘tries’, but he quickly shuts up again.

“Peppers?” she rasps, trying to wipe some of the mess off her face with her sleeve.

He coughs, squirming in the doorway. “Peppers,” he confirms, sheepishly. “Hot chilli.”

Rose wants to say something, but the throbbing discomfort in her mouth spikes up again, gulping more milk down. “_Why_?” she has to ask him when she becomes able to speak again.

When he’d told her he’d cook them a ‘proper romantic dinner’ tonight, this is not what she’d expected.

Even though the Doctor did not eat any of the dish himself, his face turns almost as red as hers feels, staring at his feet as he ruffles the hair at the back of his head, eventually mumbling an answer.

“Sorry, didn’t catch that,” she says.

“I read this article that claimed hot chilli peppers were aphrodisiacs,” he admitted. “I wanted to…test that theory.” He looks back up at her, his puppy eyes begging her to forgive him. “It’s the capsaicin, you see. It’s supposed to…stimulate the nerve endings in your tongue and induce a release in epinephrine, which in turn leads to sexual arousal. Supposedly.”

“Supposedly,” she says, licking droplets of milk from her lip, which feels thicker and definitely more tingly than usual.

He stares at the tip of her tongue, which is _barely _peeking between those swollen lips of hers. “Supposedly.”

As she stares at him, too, feeling flushed and a little bit stimulated alright, Rose realises this is another one of his ‘experiments’ they’re going to have to see all the way through. 

Again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're interested in me answering a specific prompt, don't hesitate to ask me here or over on [tumblr](https://elialys.tumblr.com/ask) ;-)


End file.
